Hawks, Skippers lose at state, but win semifinal classics
When the Minnesota state high school hockey tournament was over, anyone who watched it will have to agree that it was full of surprise twists and turns. We also will have to acknowledge that Edina was a very deserving Class AA champion, and that Breck was a deserving winner in Class A. To get an accurate slice of the flavor of the big tournament, let’s go back to Friday’s semifinal round in both classes at St.Paul’s Xcel Energy Center.
To start the day, the best game of the entire tournament sent Hermantown against Mahtomedi. Hermantown had gotten past a hustling Virginia-Mountain Iron-Buhl team in the first round, and the Hawks managed it 2-1 when Adam Krause, who had sed up Cody Christopherson for the game’s first goal, rushed the puck after an outlet pass from Garrett Skrbich early in the third period, and rifled a 45-foot shot that beat goalie Casey Myhre high to the left corner. “I was at the end of a shift and I was tired,” said Krause. “I knew I couldn’t beat the defenseman, so I just tried to put it on net.”
Mahtomedi, led by a mercurial junior defenseman named Ben Marshall, had dispatched Alexandria 6-1 in the first round, and matched up well with Hermantown. We had no idea how well. Marshall led 1-0 and 2-1 in the first period, but Chad Bannor and Jared Kolquist countered both goals for a 2-2 standoff. Charlie Adams, who was a scoring machine for the Zephyrs, made it 3-2 before Kolquist’s second goal made it 3-3 after two. The fun was yet to come. Mahtomedi’s Brandon Zurn ignited a crazy third period with a goal for the Zephyrs at 5:50, and Mike Rose made it 5-3 at 7:23. Charlie Comnick got one back for Hermantown at 8:14, cutting it to 5-4, but Zurn scored on another set-up by Marshall at 8:49, and it was 6-4. That meant three goals in 1:26, and four goals in one second less than three minutes.
Comnick, however, took matters into his own hands when he scored on the rebound of a Thomas shot at 10:27, then positioned himself to deflect Jeff Paczynski’s poewr-play point shot down and in for a 6-6 tie at 11:18. The teams stormed back and forth, trying to break the deadlock, and in a game that seemed to be decided by whoever had the puck last went down to the closing seconds, and Mahtomedi’s Marshall had the puck. He raced up ice as the final seconds ticked down, cut to his right, and sent a neat pass to the slot. Adams one-timed his shot. Hermantown goalie Tyler Ampe flicked his right arm up, and the puck glanced off his arm but continued its path high into the upper right corner of the net. The red light came on, but so did the horn. The clock said 0:00.0.
The Zephyrs, who have never reached a championship game, poured off the bench and mobbed each other in a special pile-up of players, while the Hawks stood around, pretty dejected. The officials, dutifully, went over to check with the upstairs video review official. It took a while, but the overhead view showed the puck coming into the crease, sailing through the crease, and hitting the net. When they slowed it way down, and superimposed the digital clock, however, it also showed the clock hitting 0:00.02, then 0:00.01, and then 0:00.00 — with the puck still a few inches short of reaching the goal line. No goal. The Zephyrs were devastated, while the Hawks were flying again.
“We didn’t know what to do, it hit us like a brick,” said Marshall. who led the charge in overtime, on what might have been the decisive rush. But the puck came adrift, and Commick, who already had a hat trick and one assist, dashed back the other way, up the right boards, for Hermantown. He threw a perfect, pinpoint pass to Thomas, breaking with on the left. Thomas got past the defense and rushed at goalie Brad Wohlers, deking as though cutting to his right, then coming back to score with a forehand at the left edge. At 1:12 of overtime, Hermantown had won 7-6.
“Marshall carried it into our zone, but one of our ‘D’ poked the puck away,” said Thomas. “I curled, and saw Chuck [Charlie Comnick]. We made eye-contact and he gave me a perfect pass. Going in, I realized that Garrett Skrbich had gone to his backhand on an earlier breakaway and got stopped. So I went the other way.” And Hermantown went to the championship game.
Mahtomedi coach Jeff Poeschl said: “It was up and down like a roller-coaster. You get up by two, and then thinking you won it at the end makes it tough. I’d like to think we could have hunkered down and played better defense, but both teams might say that. You have to give credit to the offense on both sides, and if we didn’t have a time limit, it probably would have ended up 32-33.”
The rest of semifinal Friday seemed dull, but it was only by comparison. Breck overcame a 1-0 Warroad lead, fashioned on Brock Nelson’s remarkable first-period goal. Nelson, grandson of Warroad legend Billy Christian, who was in the building, was lurking on the right side of the net when Brett Hebel came at the net from the left. Hebel’s backhander hit goaltender Jon Russell and popped up in the air, heading for the right corner. Ah, but Nelson was waiting like Joe Mauer for a knee-high change-up, and he laced a line drive right out of the air and into the net. Breck, however, retaliated with three goals in the second period, two by Mike Morin, and made it 4-1 before Warroad got a late goal, to fall 4-2 to the defending champion Mustangs.
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Then it was time for Class AA’s semifinals, and Edina polished off a stubborn Apple Valley outfit 2-0, but while the Hornets outshot Apple Valley 37-18, the game was devoid of any of the electricity of Hermantown’s opener. When top-ranked Minnetonka faced Hill-Murray in the second AA semifinal, the general topics of conversation were how interesting it was that the Class A teams seemed to have outstanding individuals leading the way, while the Class AA teams were much deeper and more balanced, but really lacked the star power of Class A.The other prime topic was how nothing could match the day’s first game and its wrenching last-second twist.
Hill-Murray, a very balanced and well-coached outfit, had knocked out Duluth East 5-3 in a first-round game. East jumped ahead 2-0 in the first period, then suffered a defensive-zone meltdown that lasted exactly two minutes — giving up two goals 9 seconds apart in the last minute of the first period, and two more goals 38 seconds apart in the first minute of the second period. The Greyhounds never got it back together, although they regrouped to beat Lakeville-North in the consolation round, and defeated Roseau 3-1 in the consolation final. Virginia, by the way, almost gave the Northland two consolation crowns, reboundng from its opening loss to Hermantown to beat New Ulm, before falling 2-0 to Rochester Lourdes.
Back at semifinal Friday, it was not a surprise that Hill-Murray harnessed the Greyhounds and then did the same to Minnetonka’s explosive offense. The Skippers — seeking to ride the No. 1 rating to their first-ever state title — got the first goal, when Andrew Prochno made a great move and scored form the right circle at 12:09. But Chris Casto smacked in a rebound at the other end four minutes later and the first period ended 1-1. The second period also ended 1-1, and so did the third period — and the first, second and third overtimes!
Most amazing is that Hill-Murray stifled Minnetonka with only 9 shots through three periods. I would have bet that the Minnesota Wild couldn’t have held the Skippers to 9 shots in three periods. It appeared that Connor Ryan had won the game for Minnetonka in the second overtime when he converted Tommy Lundquist’s hard pass from the right side. But the video review proved Ryan had turned his left skate to block the speeding puck and the ricochet zipped into the net. No goal. Kicked in.
By the third overtime, they were alternating between 8-minute and 17-minute sessions, and it remained 1-1. They made ice again, and the fourth overtime began, at about 12:15 Saturday morning. At 2:31 of the session, Erik Baskin, coming from the left side, chased down the puck behind the Hill-Murray goal, and circled out on the right side with a sudden move, stuffing a shot that went in off goalie Tim Shaughnessy’s pads as he slid across. The goal gave Minnetonka a 2-1 victory and a berth in the AA championship game.
On Saturday, Hermantown gave it a good run, but Breck got a lucky bounce off a shinpad to win the A title 2-1. Then Edina took out a talented but tired Minnetonka outfit, 4-2, for the AA championship. But if you had to pick a day for the archives as evidence for what makes Minnesota high school hockey the state’s best attraction, year in and year out, choose Friday.
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About the Author
John Gilbert is a lifetime Minnesotan and career journalist, specializing in cars and sports during and since spending 30 years at the Minneapolis Tribune, now the Star Tribune. More recently, he has continued translating the high-tech world of autos and sharing his passionate insights as a freelance writer/photographer/broadcaster. A member of the prestigious North American Car and Truck of the Year jury since 1993. John can be heard Monday-Friday from 9-11am on 610 KDAL(www.kdal610.com) on the "John Gilbert Show," and writes a column in the Duluth Reader.
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